Autumn broke up the gay non-conformist society of the Island. The Misses Jones went off to make fresh conquests at Brighton. Harry had to go back to his London office, but every week-end he took a bed at the “Bugle” Hotel of Newport, spent Sunday with his fiancée’s family, and returned to business by the last train. In spite of this breaking of the Sabbath, the Baptist minister believed that the young man came all the way from London to hear him preach. But at last the neighbours began to talk; so the lovers saw themselves obliged to meet only in secret, and to pour out their hearts in long letters. The worst of it was that Harry grew cross and impatient. His father, a rich shipowner at Cardiff, would never consent to his engagement with the daughter of a poor Baptist preacher. If he knew, he would cut his son off with a shilling, “as the law authorises him to do.” The Rev. Mr North, for his part, would frown on his child’s union with a family far from sound in faith. Lilian was for a long engagement, in hopes that the old people would come round. Harry’s more heroic remedy was an immediate secret marriage such as, in tale and history, has sooner or later the effect of forcing parents to make the best of a bad business. The wooer becomes ill-temperedly pressing; Lilian at length consents; but when these unpractical youngsters lay their heads together, they run up at once against the serious difficulty of finding a minister to marry them. Then the heroine takes the desperate resolution of throwing herself upon the generosity of her unsuccessful suitor. She leads Jedediah into the garden; and now for a scene in the best style of French fiction.
“Do you love me, Mr Jedediah?” I said.
The poor fellow had a moment of joy and hope.
“I ask if you love me well enough to wish my happiness, even if that should cause you pain?”
“Yes,” said he, all at once overcast again.
“And do you feel yourself capable of doing all you can to aid the accomplishment of what will be grievous to you?”
“Perhaps,” replied Jedediah with a sigh.
“Mr Jedediah, I love Harry Gordon.”
“I feared so!”
“I wish to marry him.”